Rich Coach, Poor Coach – part 4.

I have told my football players that pro football has minimal relevance to what we do in the depths of amateur Football Poverty. Here’s one example: Superstars missing all of training camp and pre-season but expect to be plunked into the starting lineup with zero reps.

Rich coaches have the luxury of inserting rich players into Game 1 lineup regardless of quantity and quality of reps invested by rich players in pre-season. That’s not relevant in our Football Poverty. No reps, no return. If you don’t invest reps in the gym and in practice, you won’t return to the game-day field. It doesn’t matter who you are. If you don’t show up, you lose out on playing time.

In our Football Poverty, hold-outs are a liability – dual meaning. They represent potential legal liability if they get busted up on game-day and they represent team liability. Hold-outs are a threat to themselves and to the team. The threat of getting sued and losing everything is worse than the threat of losing a game.

Rich coaches and rich players operate by a different standard. Rich player are already rich in strength and skill. Poor players are poor in strength and skill. The Poor have to be enriched to prevent The Poor from being broken physically and psychologically and to prevent you from going broke when you get sued for coaching negligence.

Coaching is a tough profession. No leadership job is tougher than athletic leadership in combat sports involving young people. It’s a matter of life and death. The lives of people’s children are at stake. The risk of catastrophic injury demands the highest level of strength-building and skill-building. Poor Coaches in amateur football don’t have the luxury of recruiting and drafting fully-built players. Poor Coaches have the toughest job in football – to build players from scratch. Recruiting and true coaching are two completely separate concepts.

Coaching sounds like fun until it has to be done. There is no sport more complicated and more challenging to coach than football. Learn and live – be a life-long learner so your players survive and live abundant, prosperous lives in mind, body, and soul. It’s impossible to know enough. #KeepLearning #KeepTeaching #KeepLifting